Roland James tried to sleep through it but the effort
was always futile. The night stand with the phone floated closer, farther
away, closer again. Or was it hallucination? The phone rang loudly, a strident
voice demanding attention... Then it grew soft, so soft that in times past
he would believe maybe he could sleep, sleep at last, but now he knew better.

Each day was a year in this place, so each night was four
months long. But Roland counted himself lucky if he got even an hour’s
sleep in that time. The phone was hooked to some sort of EEG in a most
diabolical manner and would jar him back to wakefulness just as he began
to drift off.

“Damn you!”

The words had long ago lost their irony.

He groped for the phone, knocking over the single glass
of water allotted him for the night. He cursed and lapped doglike at the
spilled water. The phone persisted. He groped some more until his hand
came down upon the receiver.

He hurled the phone across the room but of course it did
not hit anything. Instead, the mechanism dematerialized in its trajectory
and rematerialized on the night stand, there to mock him with more ringing.
If only it would just hit the wall when he threw it! Was that asking too
much? All he wanted was the momentary satisfaction of the phone disintegrating
into a thousand pieces as it crashed against the wall. But that never happened.

With a tiny cry, he picked up the receiver.

A polite -- it was always polite -- voice addressed him:

“Could I please speak with a Mr. Roland James?” As if
The Voice had not called a thousand times -- ten thousand times -- before!

Roland said nothing. No type of response would shut up
the Polite Voice. Instead of trying, he merely lay there blinking at the
darkness, his eyelids making audible clicks, like the pincers of a crab,
as the Polite Voice droned on about some prize drawing he was eligible
for.

I will kill him. I will kill him or them. Whoever, whatever
is responsible for this, I will kill, kill, kill.

Roland James had been a telemarketer for 28 years of his
life, so this was perhaps an appropriate part of his Hell. But still, he
vowed to someday kill whomever had rigged up this Hell. He also vowed to
someday do in the sadistic, albeit polite, bastard on the other end of
the line.

*****

Day times were more Traditional: His personal demons
chased him through sulfur pits with red-hot tridents. It was, essentially,
what he used to imagine Hell would be like, not that he had often given
the matter much thought. His demons were short, and not too fast, but they
always got the best of Roland. His problem, of course, was sleep-deprivation.
His reflexes were either too slow or overly quick. Plus he was always distracted
by some thought or memory or half-forgotten dream that was just out of
reach but oh-so-important. If he could just be rested then he would deal
with these demons! Demons, hell! More like a bunch of dim-witted munchkins.

Each day lasted one year. Midway through the day

year, Roland was granted a 20-minute break. An actual
glass-walled break room appeared amidst the fire and brimstone. Roland
and his personal demons filed in.

“Allow me,” said Demon Pride, reaching deep into a pocket
for quarters. “Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee,” Roland sighed, wishing like anything there could
be a cold beverage. What he wouldn’t give for a tall glass of Sprite with
ice!

The demons set their tridents in a corner. Pride brought
Roland over a cup of coffee and a small bag of salt-and-vinegar chips.
Deceit set a tall glass of Sprite, with crackling ice cubes floating in
it, in front of him. Roland’s hand passed right through the glass.

“Thanks,” Roland said to Pride.

Lust sat across from Roland with a copy of Evil Wenches
open on the table. Demon Envy stared pointedly at Roland’s chips and coffee.

“What a long day,” said Roland. “Sweet Jesus!”

The next instant the demons turned inside out and black
vultures swooped into the break room to tear at their guts. Alas, this
entertainment lasted only a minute and, Roland knew with certainty, the
demons would have the whole rest of the day

year to exact revenge a hundredfold on him for uttering
the Holy Name.

“Naw, this is a short day compared with some,” said Demon
Envy, as if nothing had happened. “Hell, Hitler’s still working on his
first hour.”

“There has to be a way out,” said Roland.

“Ooow, my, oh my!” shrieked Lust, pulling out the centerfold
of his magazine to reveal a naked, purple, fin-covered demoness with four-inch
tusks. Roland glanced over and was aroused. It had been far too long...

“Is there?” he asked the room at large. “Is there a way
out of here?”

Pride gaped at him. And was that a tear forming at the
corner of his eye? The demon said, “You want out?”

“Yes!” He restrained himself from saying, “God yes!”

“Well, we’ll miss you,” said Envy.

They’re screwing with me, Roland told himself. But he
followed their gaze out beyond the glass walls of the break room. There,
in the midst of the sulfur pits, stood an ordinary-looking door. It could
have been a door from an office building, complete with a lighted EXIT
sign hanging just over it.

Roland looked at the demons.

“Is this for real?”

“Would we lie to you?” Deceit asked with a snigger.

It had to be an illusion, a trick, or something. But Roland’s
legs acted seemingly on their own and the next moment he was bolting from
the break room and charging for the EXIT door. He expected it to vanish,
but it did not. So then he expected it to be locked, but it wasn’t. It
opened for him and he expected to walk right into more sulfur pits. But
instead he stepped into a plushly-furnished conference room. There was
even a water cooler with a dispenser for cone-shaped paper cups. Roland
guzzled about twenty cup fulls of cool, fresh water.

From another door, across the room, flowed a translucent,
white figure in flowing robes. For one moment Roland’s heart stopped cold
as he contemplated the possibility that this was Jesus, Himself.

His knees were just about to give when he suddenly dismissed
the idea from his mind. No, this was not the savior, he was fairly certain.
It wasn’t so much the lack of stigmata as something in the being’s demeanor.

And yet, this being, while Roland could not tell whether
it was male or female, possessed a beauty that transcended gender.

“Are you an angel?” Roland asked as he

she

it drew nearer.

“They say I am.”

The angel would not meet Roland’s eye, but instead spoke
as if addressing the floor or the overstuffed sofa. That had been what
cued Roland in to this not being the Big J.C. Surely, Jesus would be able
to look him in the eye.

“So, are you an angel?”

“I guess. I came from Heaven to minister and to help.”

Light shone through the wispy, cloudlike angel.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m not worthy of a name,” said the angel in a near-whisper.
“Not until I’ve brought a million souls to the Light.”

“And how many are you up to?”

“I’m hoping... Well, maybe you will be my first.”

Roland looked at the holy waif standing before him and
inwardly cursed. Back in his telemarketing days, he would have sold somebody
like this ten dozen of every product he had. Okay, so this wasn’t much
of an angel, but a wimpy angel was better than no angel at all.

“How do I get out of here?”

“If you would only forgive, then you’d be set free, you
could go to the Light, instead of residing in this... This horrid, horrid
place!”

Roland looked around the conference room. “This place
is a nicely furnished, pleasant room. You should try the sulfur pits.”

The angel’s eyes went wide. “Sulfur? You mean, this isn’t
hell right here?”

“Hardly. It’s more like the antechamber outside of Hell.
A waiting room, maybe. It’s nothing. Earth was worse than this.”

“Oh, Heaven! Oh mercy!” the angel cried.

“Hey, stop that! Get yourself together!”

“Okay, I’m sorry!” The angel choked back his tears.

“Tell me who I have to forgive. Come on, help me!”

“He comes to this room. Forgive him and you are free!”
the angel without a name implored.

“Who? Someone from my past, you mean?”

“Past?” said the angel. “That word... It confuses me.”

Just then the door from which Roland had come opened again.
A man he had never seen before stepped through.

“Forgive!” the angel pleaded.

Piece of cake, Roland thought.

Then the stranger spoke: “Hello, sir, it has been brought
to my attention, via reliable sources, that for a limited time only...”

It was him. It was the voice that came through the phone
line all those times in the endless nights after he relented and picked
up the receiver.

It was him. But it was more, so much more. It was the
voice of every supercilious boss, civil servant and lover Roland had ever
encountered. It was the voice of his second-grade teacher informing him
that his efforts at painting were “cute.” It was the voice of his first
wife telling him how much she truly admired the courageous way he accepted
his -- ahem -- shortcomings with such grace. It was all of them, it was
everyone who had ever pissed him off royally.

And it was the sound of an endlessly ringing phone.

“...in my Earthly life, sir, I was always short with people,
never took time for them, was rude, sir, yes I was rude, but here things
are...”

On and on the Polite Man droned. And in that instant Roland
understood what the angel had meant when he said the word “past” confused
him -- for there was a realm in which past, present and future all melded
into one singular now, and that now consisted only of this endlessly droning
Polite Voice...

Roland roared and charged the Polite Man. The man had
appeared to be solid enough but Roland passed right through him to go sprawling
across the floor. Nearby, the angel with a self-esteem issue gasped loudly.
The Polite Man droned on. Blood roared in Roland’s ears and he thought
he heard the sound of a telephone nearby. He took several swings at Politeness
Man but of course he connected with nothing.

“Forgive, please, forgive!” cried the angel.

“I would if I could just... Just belt the son of a bitch
a good one first,” Roland cried out. He thought of all the times in his
life he had bitten back rage. He thought of all the times in this existence
he had hurled the phone across the room only to have it quietly rematerialize
on the night stand.

“I am so unworthy, I should just throw myself in the sulfur
pits,” the angel sobbed.

Roland spun. His rage, having been denied its target,
could only lash out in a wider arc. He had never been a violent man in
his life (here in the Other Place, he was plagued by Demon Anger and Demon
Petulance, but only on a part-time basis). He had never, during his Earthly
life, hit anyone, save for during a couple grade-school scuffles. But there
was something about residing in Hell that just brought out the worst in
a person.

He swung with everything he had. He fully expected his
fist to pass right through the translucent angel, but instead it connected
with a hearty and satisfying solidity. The angel fell but no sooner had
he sprawled to the floor than Roland was hauling him up by the robe to
his holy feet, the better to hit him again. An uppercut this time. His
fist buried itself in the angel’s gut and lifted him right off the floor
and it felt good, God but it felt good! Then Roland let loose with an old-fashioned
haymaker that connected with the angel’s nose, and it was like opening
a spigot of blood. The angel’s eyes were wide with surprise, shock, horror.

Then the rage was gone as the angel slumped one final
time to the floor. The Polite Man was silent. A pool of blood spread slowly
across the floor. Roland stared for a time and fell to his knees. What
have I done? He reached out to touch the angel. The angel flinched. Roland’s
mouth was filled with the nasty aftertaste of adrenaline.

“I’m sorry. I...” He didn’t know what else to say. What
else could be said? “I’m sorry!”

He and the Polite Man helped the angel up from the floor.
The angel was unsteady on his feet.

“I should be going,” the angel said, holding one hand
to his nose to slow the bleeding.

“Not that way,” said Roland, as he started toward the
door that he, Roland, had come in from.

The angel steadied himself and shook both men off. He
stood straighter, held his head high and his shoulders back. “Yes. This
way. Allow me to do my penance.” He looked Roland in the eye, briefly,
before walking through the door.

“Go with God,” Roland whispered.

After the angel had left, Roland turned toward the stranger.
This was just another person serving his time in Hell. How could he be
angry? If this man didn’t call him up all through his night, then somebody
else would.

“I’m sorry for everything. It’s... It’s been a long day.
Please forgive me.”

“Apology accepted, sir. And please accept mine, as well.”

The two men shook hands. Roland was surprised to find
this other man to be solid flesh and bones, just like himself.

From across the room there was a soft click as the door
-- the one from which the nameless angel had come -- popped open and a
beautiful light filled the room.

“Good day, sir,” said the Polite Man. “I wish you well.”

Then he walked through the door into the Light.

Roland gazed at the light a long time but eventually turned
away and exited through the door from which he had entered.

*****

The phone rang only twice before Roland picked it up.

“Hello, Mr. James, I am calling to inform you of our one-time-only
offer to enter into our sweepstakes....”

It was a new voice but a familiar spiel.

“Yes,” said Roland. “Please tell me more.”

Roland James stayed on the line for a long time. When
morning finally came, a day or week or a month later, he said “good bye”
and gently, almost lovingly, placed the receiver back into its cradle.